Chapter 9 of 9The Box Was Empty

The deed she carried home from The Settler's Inn on Saturday is still folded in its manila envelope, and by Monday the whole of Harmony Creek has an opinion about it. Owen Pritchard's opinion is that Marianne Abbott forged it and should lose her job for it.

The main reading room of the Harmony Creek Public Library fills at its usual Monday pace — a table of teenagers with a civics assignment, the retirees with their newspapers — and the long windows along the south wall let in the flat white light of a Virginia morning after the first frost. A Tuesday reader from the library's book club leans over the reference desk with her glasses pushed up into her hair.

"Is it true you found a deed that says Colonel Westwood stole the town?"

"I found a deed," Marianne says. "It says something other than what the plaque says."

"Well." She lets her glasses fall. "My grandmother would have had opinions about that."

Marianne goes back to a shelf list she is not reading. Daniel Murphy comes up the aisle with a cart of returns from the Friends' book sale rack, where the paperbacks go for fifty cents and the mysteries go first.

"Someone talked," he says, parking the cart at the end of the desk.

"Grace?"

"No. Owen was holding court in the Food Lion parking lot on Saturday afternoon, telling anyone who stood still. That isn't how he knew the date."

"Then how?"

"The surveyor the Historical Society sent to look at the inn eats breakfast there every Saturday — biscuits, sausage, apple butter — and on Saturday he was close enough to read the date off the vellum."

So it has gone from Grace's dining room to Westwood Manor over a plate of sausage, and Marianne spent Sunday at her own kitchen table with the deed under a stack of Eleanor's index cards, settling nothing.

"Did Grace tell him?"

"Grace called me last night to say she didn't, and she was hot about it." He tucks his earbuds into his collar. "Owen had the board president on the phone before church."

"Before church."

"Sofia has been on the phone since she got in."

Marianne looks down the length of the room at the front doors, at the display case where the Founder's Day poster has begun to curl at one corner, at the teenagers who have never once cared who she is.

"Fascinating," she murmurs, which is not what she means.

Then he comes in.

Owen Pritchard crosses the lobby without stopping at the circulation desk. He comes up the center aisle in his tweed jacket, and the room does go quiet for him, and he stops at the corner of the reference desk where the returns cart blocks the way.

"Mrs. Abbott."

"Mr. Pritchard." She leaves her hands where they are on the shelf list.

"Good. Witnesses." He turns and takes in the tables, the teenagers, the reader with the glasses in her hair, the student page shelving returns in the 973s. "I want this said where people can hear it."

"You're in a library. People hear everything."

"You and Jamal Washington have manufactured a document, and you have slandered my family with it in a public building."

Marianne squares the shelf list against the edge of the desk and takes her time about it.

"The deed is real, Mr. Pritchard. It is dated 1868 and your family's name is not on it."

"You put a paper in an old envelope and carried it in here as proof." He taps one knuckle against the desk. "That box in the inn was empty, and anybody who has ever set foot in that attic could tell you so."

"I didn't put anything in it."

"Forgeries are dated, Mrs. Abbott. That is what makes them forgeries."

He leans over the desk until his shadow crosses her blotter, and the room watches him do it.

"You will sign the transfer form, and so will your director, and every box in that collection goes back to Westwood Manor where it belongs. You can do that quietly, or the board can do it for you."

Behind him a chair leg scrapes, and one of the teenagers gets up to sharpen a pencil that does not need sharpening.

"Sofia hasn't signed it."

"She will."

He glances down at the canvas tote bag beside the leg of her chair. The envelope shows at the top of it — she set the bag down that morning and has not thought about it since — and he reaches.

"Mr. Pritchard."

Daniel Murphy comes around the end of the desk and stands between them, close enough that Owen has to pull his hand back to keep from touching him.

"Step back."

"You work here, son. Remember that."

"I do," Daniel says. "Step back."

For a moment nothing moves in the reading room except the pens at the long table. Then Owen Pritchard straightens his jacket, and the color comes up his neck, and he speaks loudly enough for the whole floor.

"I will have your job for this, Mrs. Abbott. That is a promise, and I keep my promises."

Marianne says nothing at all. He walks out past the circulation desk and past the curled poster, and the front doors close behind him.

"I have never liked that man," the Tuesday reader says, to nobody in particular.

Daniel rights the returns cart before he answers. "Are you all right, Marianne?"

"Yes."

"Where is the deed?"

"In my bag."

"Take it home tonight. Not the desk. Home."

Marianne closes her fingers around the strap.

The Tuesday reader is still standing there with her coat half on. "I'll say what I saw, if anyone asks."

"Thank you," Marianne says, and means it.

She had taken Daniel off her list on Friday, and a list is a private thing. Now the whole reading room has watched him step between her and Owen Pritchard's reaching hand, and the room has gone back to its ordinary noises — the radiator, a chair leg on the tile, someone's phone buzzing in a coat pocket.

Sofia Navarro comes out of her office with her scarf still on and a printed page in her hand.

"Okay, so." She hands the page to Marianne. "He called the board president before the doors opened. Emergency session, Friday, community room."

"Personnel and collection practices," Marianne says, reading it off the page. "That's me twice."

"Four days." Sofia pulls a chair around and sits down. "Where is it now?"

"With me."

"Good. Keep it that way."

Marianne folds the page in half.

"Can they vote?"

"They can vote. That's why it's an emergency and not the regular meeting." Sofia folds her hands on her knee. "I'll be in the room. I'll say what I can say. But I can't stand up and defend a piece of paper nobody can trace."

"It can be traced."

"Then trace it, and bring it to me by Friday."

Sofia waits, her hands still folded.

"I'll need Grace's box, every index page the county has on that property, and a name for the surveyor."

"Indices I can get. The rest is yours." Sofia stands and looks at Marianne a moment longer than the sentence needs.

Sofia goes back to her office and shuts the door. The reader in the glasses buttons her coat, says something to the teenagers about their notes, and leaves.

Marianne takes the envelope out of the tote bag and holds it. A deed alone is one piece of paper, and a board can dismiss a piece of paper. What no board can dismiss is a chain — a locked box in an attic, an innkeeper who told no one, a surveyor who eats his breakfast at The Settler's Inn and sits in Owen Pritchard's pew on Sunday, a page missing from the county's own index with the word damaged written across it.

She has four days to build the chain.

She puts the deed back in the bag, and instead of sitting down at her desk she dials the number written on the back of Eleanor Dawes's note.

"Mr. Washington. This is Marianne Abbott. May I come and see you tomorrow morning?"